China will lend Australia new giant pandas, symbols of Beijing’s diplomatic friendships, to replace the pair of ursids whose loan contract is expiring, the Chinese Prime Minister announced on Sunday.
The Adelaide Zoo, in southern Australia, has welcomed two giant pandas sent by Beijing, Wang Wang and Fu Ni, since 2009, a practice also known as “panda diplomacy”.
For China, panda diplomacy is a form of “soft power”, a strategy of influence in international relations.
Beijing thus enters into loan agreements for its pandas with foreign zoos which, in the event of birth, generally have to return the small ursids a few years later so that they join the country’s breeding program.
As the loan agreement with Canberra expired this year, the two giant pandas in the care of Adelaide Zoo had still not given birth to cubs.
The birth of pandas is a rare event: these herbivorous plantigrades have the ability, extremely rare in the animal kingdom, to stop the development of the fetus if they consider that the period is not favorable for giving birth. This is the so-called “diapause” period.
“Wang Wang and Fu Ni have been away from home for 15 years. I guess they missed their home a lot and so they will return to China before the end of the year,” Chinese Premier Li Qiang said at the zoo from Adelaide, the first stop on his trip to Australia where the senior Chinese official landed on Saturday.
“But what I can tell you is that we will provide as soon as possible a new pair of equally beautiful, charming and adorable pandas,” assured Mr. Li, adding that Beijing will submit a list of candidates to Canberra.
“It’s good for the economy, for jobs in South Australia, for tourism and it’s a symbol of goodwill, and we thank you for that,” said Australian Foreign Minister Penny. Wong.
According to the organization WWF, which works in the field of environmental protection, there are around 1,860 giant pandas remaining, mainly in the bamboo forests of mountainous regions of China.
Thanks to conservation programs, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) removed the panda from the category of “endangered” at the end of 2016. It nevertheless remains listed as a vulnerable species in its red list of threatened species.
